Beyond Jesus

Patricia A. Pearce has written a personal, spiritual odyssey called Beyond Jesus. It is a compelling story, and will inspire you to consider your own spiritual odyssey!! At least that has been the effect I am experiencing as I read this book.

In fact, as I am reading, I am seriously considering offering this to our local Jung Society as a book club discussion session (or sessions, if that is required!!). Pearce is not specifically a Jungain per se, but certainly embodies a lot of what Carl Jung taught, such as paying attention to dreams and their messages, constantly seeking to grow spiritually, as well as psychologically. A Jungian scholar I know says this is evidence of what Jung called “individuation”.

I can see this book fostering a lot of discussion. And any readers out there who might be beyond the reach of the Calgary Jung Society would do well to read this book, maybe sparking some book discussion groups of your own!!!

One of the issues which this book has raised in my own mind is the idea that Jung’s ideas need to be promulgated beyond the scope of Jungian adherents. It is so tempting to keep Jung’s ideas to his own words. Certainly there are lots of those!! His collected works encompass 18(?) volumes!! But I suspect Jung himself would encourage his students, readers, and clients to go beyond where he took things, to expand his ideas beyond his own, to grow his ideas into new areas. That is what Beyond Jesus is doing for me. And I trust it will do that for anyone who reads this little book!! The book is readily available and is only a little over 200 pages. And it is a completely engrossing read!!!!

Two amazing novels!!!

I recently finished reading two novels: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, and To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara. Both of them are large, complicated stories. Both of them cover several time periods. Both of them have powerful messages for us.

Cloud Cuckoo Land goes back and forth from the 1500’s to present day, to the future. Occasionally I had a bit of trouble following, but I think this was mainly a function of the fact that I couldn’t read the book consistently, there often being several days in between sitting down with the book. So I take responsibility for this minor negative aspect!

The one unifying feature throughout the various timelines of the novel is an ancient manuscript discovered, preserved, and translated. The ancient story it presents is called, in English, Cloud Cuckoo Land.

I will not go into any level of description. I suspect it would be beyond me to do this story justice. But I will say that anyone who ventures into Cloud Cuckoo Land will not be disappointed! It is a very gripping story, and ultimately gives a picture of hope for us as a human population.

To Paradise in some ways is similar to Cloud Cuckoo Land. It is structured into three books, each dealing with a different time period. Book One happens in 1893, Book Two in 1993, and (you guessed it?) Book Three 2093. To Hanya Yanagihara’s credit, she doesn’t explain much, and sometimes that can be a bit confusing. But there are characters in each of these time periods who have the same or similar names. And there are some similar locations where the stories take place. But each book presents a quite distinct story.

Again, I am not going to go into any sort of detail, for the same reasons I couldn’t do that for the above book; but I will say that this is a gripping story. It presents history with some very interesting wrinkles. And it projects the future in some disturbing and interesting ways.

I will say this: the novel has a quite melancholy air to it. The future which Hanya Yanagihara paints is very dystopian. It is easy to see how the author projects today’s world into the future and where society might be leading. And it is not a pleasant image. It is downright discouraging, to be honest. And I think this is because it is quite obvious from today’s world where she gets her ideas. We very easily could be heading into directions as she depicts them. This aspect of the novel can be taken as a direct warning of what we could face in the future.

So, if you have a tendency to view today with critical, depressing opinions, this book will certainly support your leanings!

The hopeful message is that no matter how bleak society becomes, there is always hope. The human spirit seems able to rise above the darkness, no matter how extreme, of disintegrating governments and societies.

One aspect of To Paradise is its depiction of gay relationships. Even in Book One there is much more acceptance of homosexuality than in today’s world. Again, Hanya Yanagihara does a masterful job of just allowing the story to develop, without explaining much. It takes awhile at points in the story to realize just what we are reading about! Again, due to my somewhat disjointed reading times, I would become confused, having forgotten who some of the characters were and previous parts of the story. But is was always rewarding to pick up the theme.

So, once again, if you want a good hefty read, I highly recommend To Paradise. It is a long (700 pages!), very complicated story, well put together, and worth the effort it takes to read.

Been a long time!!

It has been several years since I have posted on the urbanmonk website. I hope to be able to post occasionally, starting now, at the beginning of 2022. I’m not sure why it has been so long since I’ve posted. Did I not have anything worth saying? Did I not think anything I might say was worth anyone else’s time? I’m really not sure!!

Now, we are in the second year of a pandemic. I am spending a lot of time in the house. I still work part-time; right now I’m at two days per week. I have several activities on the go.

One is, I am considering developing a book discussion topic for the Calgary Jung Society, based on the book, Beyond Jesus, by Patricia Pearce. The book is not specifically a Jungian book, but covers themes which fit with Jungian philosophy. The book is basically Pearce’s spiritual journey. So it deals with spirituality, growing, seeking, etc. This reflects my own odyssey. I have never been satisfied with staying at one state, whether that is spiritual, psychological, emotional, or physical. I always want to push on to something more, some new plane. If you look back at old posts on this web site, you will see that is a characteristic of mine.

And I know I’m not the only one with this condition; thus wanting to open up a discussion for a number of folks to participate.

So, I will let any readers who I may still have on this site know how that turns out. But enough for now. I basically just wanted to get back into the groove of posting!!

Later

QAnon

I am increasingly hearing references to QAnon in news media. I don’t know all that much about it, but I have been fascinated with QAnon for close to a decade now. QAnon has really upped its visibility since Donald Trump came to power.  I follow several websites and blogs which could readily be summed up as “flighty”!!! Several of them reference QAnon regularly.

Apparently QAnon is a channel with seemingly “inside” news of the Trump administration. Its posts (are they all through “Twitter”?) are very esoteric, and often confusing. Thus they are open to a wide range of interpretation.

And QAnon is strongly pro-Trump. Apparently this source has been increasingly picked up and promoted by conservative, right-wing religion. In one of the recent protest marches which are currently so prominent on TV news, I saw a woman holding up a sign reading, “Q for Trump”, or something of that sort. So, Q (as it originally was known) is being talked about, and noticed more and more.

Apparently, one of Q’s messages is that Donald Trump came to power specifically to “drain the swamp”. He is supposedly going to get rid of the “powers-that-be”, often called the “ruling cabal” or “ruling elite” by Q’s followers.

Now, I have no trouble recognizing that the actual people “calling the shots”, the ones “pulling the strings” are largely invisible, behind-the-scenes, powerful leaders. We talked that sort of talk back in the sixties and seventies when I was a young man!! We recognized that the person in power, in elected office, was not the one actually in power. We knew there were shadowy figures in the background.

Remember, I grew up in the time when the Kennedys were assassinated, and Martin Luther King. It did not take me terribly long to realize that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill President Kennedy. We all knew that there were powers at work behind the scenes to accomplish these nefarious ends.

I love a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone! And a lot of QAnon’s stuff comes under that rubric. As I said above, I really do not know a lot about Q. But I do have questions about the little I do know. For example, QAnon has been linked with the Epoch Times, which is a commonly distributed newspaper of Chinese origin. I can pick up a copy just about anywhere in Calgary, where I live. There are indications that this newspaper has strong ties to the Falun Gong, an outlawed, quasi-religious sect in China and among Chinese people around the world opposed to Communism. And the Epoch Times is a strong supporter of Trump for president. The Chinese people see him as the best bet to overthrow Xi Jinping, the leader of the Communist party of China. I heard recently that the Epoch Times has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the entire world!

What that all means, I do not know. I know that anything associated with China or Chinese people has the potential to be big, if nothing else! So I fear this support for Trump.

Another thing which comes under the heading of conspiracy stuff, is the revealing of UFO and extra-terrestrial information. Just today, June 20, 2020, I saw an interview with Trump where he kind of slyly hinted that he knows stuff about that topic which he might reveal at some point. If he does that close to the election, that could swing the vote in his favour.

As I pointed out in my previous post, earlier today, Trump will do anything to get re-elected. He does not care how much it hurts the country, how much it undermines democracy, how much it upsets the world order, how it may hurt individuals. If it allows him to hold onto power, he will do it. As John Bolton says in his book, there is no other consideration for Trump.

Also, in my previous post, I noted that at the beginning of Trump’s presidency I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. As his ineptitude, his moral and ethical deficit, his pathological mental incapacity became clearer and clearer, I vowed not to get too worked up over it. I tried to refrain from fierce arguments with my many friends and family who support Trump. I figured everything would work out alright in the end.

But I heard a commentator on air the other day saying that we cannot afford to waste time. We have this pandemic shutdown time in which to think, to consider what we are facing. And it is up to each individual to speak out. We can no longer afford to be silent. I know I have few readers of this blog; but it is one voice I have, and I will be conscientious and speak my mind. I will share what information I have. I will share my opinions. I welcome any response, on any side of any of these arguments!!!!

WHAT A MESS!!!!

Little Donnie has sure been successful in getting not only his country, but the entire world into one huge pile of [manure]! When he was first elected, I recall sitting on the couch watching the results come in. I was in absolute stunned dismay. But I figured (back then, in 2016) I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. Surely, once he was in office, he would become somewhat more presidential. He would fill the office; the office would help mold him. He would exhibit more proper leadership than I had yet seen out of him during the campaign. Surely there were people in the Whitehouse who could ameliorate some of Trump’s unethical craziness. As we can all see, that has not come to pass. He has gotten worse and worse in his seemingly utter inability to do anything constructive.

Steve Benen, in his new book, The Imposters, states that Trump, and subsequently the Republican Party, care nothing for policy. They are not interested in actually running the country. They have one aim, and one aim only, and that is power. The party has been that way since losing the 2008 election, says Benen. Once Barak Obama came into power, the GOP had only one objective, and that was to block everything, absolutely everything, that he wanted to do while in office. Mitch McConnell’s publicly stated aim was to make Obama a one-term president.

So, with Obama’s time in office winding down (after two terms!!) the Republicans found the perfect candidate to continue their “post-policy” agenda (Benen’s term). Trump cares nothing for the country; he cares nothing for the American people. He doesn’t care for the minutiae of governing. He wants one thing only, and that is power.

Another book, just coming out, is John Bolton’s memoir of his 17 months inside the Trump administration. He, like Benen, stated that he could think of nothing Trump did while he (Bolton) was in office that was not geared to re-election.

The latest in a long string of power moves happened yesterday, in a now-familiar Friday night news dump. Trump removed everyone in leadership at the “Voice of America” broadcasting network, replacing them with one of his own, Stephen K. Bannon-approved, men. Admittedly, I did not know much about the VOA group of stations, and what they did. I had always thought of them as WWII and cold-war programs. There aim has always been to get truth out to the world, especially to those areas of the world where truth was hard to come by. There were a half-dozen or so various stations under the VOA umbrella, apparently. Yesterday, all of them had their leaders fired; all of them had their entire boards of directors fired.

Is this a move to obtain a media voice of his own which will repeat ad nauseam all of his “fake-news”? Trump had been getting increasingly unhappy with the performance of his previously sycophantic news network, Fox (or should it more appropriately be called “Faux News”?!!) because it wasn’t toeing his line as much as it once did. So Trump needed a new outlet for all his gas-lighting efforts. Will this be it? Will Trump be allowed to get away with this blatant grab for power?

During the previous few months of coronavirus lockdown, I have been off work, self-isolating at home, giving me lots of time for reading and watching. One of my projects is a thousand plus page book on Winston Churchill. I have also binge-watched the three seasons of The Crown, and, more recently, World War II in colour. So I’ve renewed my awareness of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. And there are frightful parallels to some of the moves Donald Trump is making. This recent (just last night, remember) grab for power seems so Adolf-like, that I am really scared.

I’m sure everyone can see Donald Trump’s fascination with totalitarian leaders. He admires their holds on power, and clearly envies them their positions. Could he be attempting such a move in the USA? I know, I know, that the 1930’s German situation was vastly different than the 2020 US. But I can’t help but see patterns. And it does not reassure me.

I can only hope the Democratic Party does not foul up their chances to win next fall’s election. I think the DNC was largely responsible for losing the 2016 election; I hope they’ve learned some lessons. And I hope the Democrats win not only the Whitehouse, but both houses of Congress as well. And then I hope they pursue investigations into the criminal activity of the current administration. I would like nothing better than to see little Donnie, Billie and Mackey (McConnell) all dressed up in orange jump suits and sharing a cell!!!

There is one stinking, huge pile of manure we are facing, and I’m not sure how we will deal with this mess. I want to continue my thoughts, but I will do that in a separate post. This is long enough!!!

 

Contrasting two presidential candidates

The presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, Joe Biden “. . . is expected to offer his sympathies to [George] Floyd’s relatives and record a video message for Floyd’s funeral service, which is taking place later in the day (June 8, 2020) in Houston, [Biden’s] aides said. He is not expected to attend the service to avoid any disruption to mourners that could be caused by his Secret Service protective detail.” This is from the Reuters news agency, emphasis my own.

Last week, on the other hand, President Donald Trump, ordered protesters who were peacefully and legally gathered on the street and in the plaza in front of his residence removed forcibly. These people were protesting the same violence which led to George Floyd being killed. And what was the reason Trump wanted them removed? For one brief photo op in front of the church across the street, St John’s Church. Police used tear-gas and “flash-bangs” plus officers on horse back to very violently clear the area so that Trump could casually walk across the street, hold up a Bible (upside down, it appears!!) and get his photo taken.

The contrast could not be clearer. On one hand, Biden was sensitive to what his presence could mean to the memorial service for George Floyd. On the other hand, Trump caused major disruption, discomfort and injury just for a completely selfish, vain photo-shoot.

Earlier, a few days ago, I heard a news commentator, in another context, characterize Joe Biden’s actions as, “. . . what we used to expect our President to be like.” Trump, on the other hand, exhibits absolutely no sensitivity or concept of what his narcissistic behaviour looks like. He doesn’t care who gets hurt, or who is pushed around. When he decides he wants something, he cares nothing for anyone in the way.

Our nation cannot afford four more years of this kind of unfeeling, bullying behaviour.

The Trump Virus

A friend commented the other day that it seems we are dealing not with one virus, the coronavirus COVID-19, but a second virus as well, that being the virus of conservative Republicanism that surrounds Donald Trump. As every day goes by it seems like the cult of Donald Trump is growing stronger, and the people who surround him, who should be giving him accurate and factual information, are increasingly afraid to express anything which differs from what Trump thinks or believes to be true.

This became most obvious the other day when there were pictures of the vice president, Mike Pence, attending a gathering in the Mayo clinic. He was the only one in the picture who did not have a mask; every other person, whether doctor, nurse or some other medical professional, were wearing masks. Mike Pence stood out from the crowd. It was obvious to me that the only reason he was not wearing a mask was for an audience of one, namely Donald Trump. Everybody else wanted him to be wearing a mask. In fact Pence got a huge backlash of criticism for not wearing a mask; but he was obviously doing it just to please Donald Trump, the cult leader. He was afraid of what Trump would say if he saw pictures of Pence in a mask.

And how many Republican leaders surrounding Donald Trump are sycophantically just following his lead unquestioningly? From congressional leaders to conservative press, everyone seems frightened to cross the leader or to say anything at odds with what Donald Trump says.

The more of this behaviour that I see, the more it seems to me that people are blindly following the lead of an extremely dysfunctional and disturbed leader who does not seem to know what he is doing. They are infected with the virus. Trump looks like he is totally clueless as to how to proceed in dealing with COVID-19. And he seems incapable of listening to true scientific information and putting it into practice. If he himself has not come up with the idea he is too fragile in his personality to allow anyone else to get credit for positive moves.

Trump does not seem capable of true leader ship. A true leader would gladly gather people around him who are experts in their field, who know what they’re doing, listening to them, gathering information to put into practice. Trump’s leadership, if it appears present at all, is not even close to true leader ship. It seems illogical, inconsistent, varying wildly from day today, and sometimes just downright outrightly dangerous.

Trump seems totally divorced from any concept of truth; he seems totally incapable of speaking truth. He makes wild claims that are almost completely false. One of those claims is that he acted precipitously, that he acted early in dealing with this virus. From my perception Trump was at least two weeks late in responding to the virus and by many estimations was more like a month late in doing anything practical or rational. I think when all is said and done there will be tens of thousands of lives that can be put directly at Trump’s feet; he is responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of people by his failure to act on time in a meaningful or concrete manor in dealing with this threat to the nation.

And of course all of his Republican sycophantic toadies will share in this responsibility. Everyone who failed to counter Trump’s irrational ideas, who failed to prod him to act expeditiously, will share in this responsibility for the deaths of thousands of US citizens. It is like a virus infecting the White House, infecting the Trump administration. And so, in addition to dealing with the coronavirus, we must also deal with the Trump virus.

Spare us!!!

Andrew McCabe

The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, written by former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, is a book every single US citizen should read. It will make you proud of the men and women who serve to protect your country. It will also enlighten you into some of the background of the machinations of the Trump administration, especially its relationship with the Department of Justice and the FBI.

The Threat is written autobiographically by McCabe regarding his time in the FBI. He served as second-in-command to James Comey before Comey got fired by Trump. He then took over the reigns of the FBI until he also got himself fired. Neither of these men would bow to Trump by pledging loyalty to him. Instead they both insisted their loyalty was solely to the country they served, its constitution and the rule of law.

This book, in addition to revealing some of the politics happening in Washington these days, gives a fascinating inside look at some of the ways in which the nation’s top law-enforcement officers operate.

I will not go into any detail of the contents, but suffice to say that this book should be read by every US citizen resident. It is a well-written account of McCabe’s tenure in the FBI, especially his last couple years.

Linda Backman

Looking through the entire list of old posts, especially the “Reviews” section, I could not believe that I had never written a review of Linda Backman’s first book, Bringing Your Soul to Light: Healing Through Past Lives and the Time Between. It was published in 2009. In 2012 I travelled to Boulder, Colorado, to attend a training session in BLSR, Between Lives Soul Regression, put on by Linda Backman’s organization, the Ravenheart Center. Earlier I had taken an online course in PLSR, Past Lives Soul Regression with Linda Backman. All of this as a way of introduction to this remarkable woman!

In this review I will deal with her first two books, the one mentioned above, and her second, The Evolving Soul: Spiritual Healing Through Past Life Exploration. I am just beginning her third book, published in 2018, and will review that at a later date.

First, a bit about the author. Linda is a licensed psychologist, having practiced since 1978. In the early 1990’s, through a personal experience of encountering the soul of a partner who had just died. She began researching information on what she was experiencing, and was led to training under Michael Newton, who is a pioneer regression therapist. Newton’s two books, Journey of Souls, and Destiny of Souls are highly, highly recommended reading for anyone even remotely interested in this topic.

Linda Backman began her own regression hypnotherapy practice and has guided innumerable people in recovering memories they have of previous lives and the time in-between incarnations. Drawing from the knowledge of her many sessions with clients she explains some of the lessons we can learn from soul regression. These lessons are detailed in her first book, with many transcriptions of sessions she has guided.

These sessions are most often profound, life-changing events in a person’s life, as I myself have experienced, and detail in other posts on the Urban Monk site. Because many of the aspects of soul regression are detailed elsewhere, I will not go into great detail in reviewing Dr Backman’s first book.

Her second book, however, delves into more detail in areas I am currently more interested in, so I will say more about that here. [more to come!!]

more NDE’s – three stories

George G. Ritchie (with Elizabeth Sherrill): Return From Tomorrow.

Mary Neal: To Heaven and Back: A Doctor’s Extraordinary account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again.

Howard Storm: My Descent Into Death

Each of these books chronicle an NDE. The first two have aspects which make them compelling. I will begin with a brief look at Ritchie’s book. George Ritchie was an army recruit in the last years of WW II. In 1943, while in basic training in Texas, he got critically ill and experienced the typical NDE when he medically died and was resuscitated.

This NDE is one of the earliest I have read about, in my decades-long interest in these phenomenal occurrences. In 1943 the term, Near Death Experience, had not even been coined. By the time his story was chronicled and published, it had been recognized as a somewhat common experience of those who have been pronounced dead.

George Ritchie did not realize for quite some time that he had “died”, and he spent considerable time trying to make sense of what he was sensing. Later in his life, he encountered some of the locations he visited while in spirit, receiving confirmation of the reality of this mystical experience.

As with so many NDExperiencers Ritchie did not want to return to this life, and indeed was very angry at finding himself in this world. But after a year or more, and after intensely praying to be released from this life, asking for reasons why he couldn’t go back to the wonderfully peaceful, loving environment he had come out of, he came to accept that he really was destined to live out his human life.

He then, over a period of some months, or years, began to experience what he described as the face of Jesus in other people. And he realized he was not alone; he realized he was still being assisted by heaven’s emissaries, especially the Christ. He became a doctor, and after practicing for some eight or so years, trained to become a psychiatrist. In this capacity he found he could help people change their lives in deep ways.

In fact, the book is set up as him telling a client his story, over the weeks and months he came to see Dr. Ritchie. This client was dying of cancer, and was bitter about this. Dr. Ritchie sought to install some hope into his life through the sharing of his own story. He was successful!

Mary Neal is also a medical doctor, practicing as a spinal surgeon in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. An avid outdoor enthusiast, she and her husband were on an adventure kayaking down a river in Chile with a group. In some pretty extreme rapids her kayak became trapped between some rocks and she ended up under water. She drowned, was eventually rescued, and revived.

During the time she was “dead” she experienced an NDE. Again, she went through some pretty typical elements of NDE’s. The book, however, is almost more about her life after the NDE and how it affected her life, her practice, and dealing with deaths in her family, including a son.

It really is an incredible story. It is well-written, and keeps the readers’ interest right to the end. She speaks as a Christian, but in a totally non-preachy way. Church and religion are just part of who she is, and she projects no judgement on anyone else’s views. I never got any impression she was trying to convince anyone of travelling her path. She simply related her experience as just that: her experience, and nothing more.

Dr. Neal’s book is certainly more accessible than Dr. Ritchie’s, a much older book, but both books are worth searching for and reading. (I had to read Dr. Ritchie’s as an e-book, something I do not find particularly enjoyable.) However you find them, enjoy the stories. They are worth the effort!!

Howard Storm’s book, however, I do not recommend, at all. It is poorly written, and becomes very preachy. The reader is definitely given the impression that they must follow Storm’s path. Do not waste your time reading this book.